Falling off the Tai Chi Wagon

Some of the world’s greatest bloggists say you must never bog about your pets or you kids. So flying in the face of conventional wisdom I have to use my cat Bracken to tell this story….

She (the cat) waits for me when I go out – not during the day but at night. It breaks my heart to see this little thing charging down the drive way like a startled bambi in snow, sleet and rain (and good weather). The idea of this charge is to jump into the opened car door and have a little drive to the garage. But very often, especially in good weather, Bracken is easily distracted and stops to roll in a nice bit of sand, sniffs an interesting leaf or rubs her face on the open door… quite forgetting why she has stayed up all night (well, part of it) and forgetting that I am getting a tad impatient whilst she does cat things. I often end up getting out and scooping her up, pop her in the car and off we go….. so why am I telling you this?

Because I have been distracted and not focusing on something that is really important to me, makes me very happy, something I really enjoy and something that is so good for my health. Tai Chi. I have been bunking classes, finding some very lame excuses to miss class and accepting invitations that I could so easily push out by a half hour so I can still do Tai Chi and the invitation. I have been distracted…. Like Bracken… forgetting why I do Tai Chi. Since I had a hip replacement* nearly 4 years ago I can do full flat footed squats which I could never do before – even when I was young and trim. My back doesn’t ache, I feel energized and generally great and at peace with the world. I don’t have to swallow anti-inflammatories like smarties, I love seeing my Tai Chi friends…… and one class a week doesn’t do it. I will, next week, climb back on the Tai Chi wagon ….. and fight my way back to the front row of the class.

The lesson here…. It is so easy to fall off the wagon. Getting back onto it (wagons are quite high)is not so easy – so be determined, get back into the habit. You’ve done it before - like giving up smoking, gym, running, no boozing, dieting, eating well, writing every day etc etc…. OK, she tell herself.... enough already. Just climb back on!

*In case you are wondering why I had the hip-replacement. I got arthritis due to trauma. I believe the trauma occurred some years ago when I fell off an elephant - we had been out riding for a couple of hours and I dozed off (lost focus????) sitting on top of this whopping great beast and wham.

The Happiness Soup Project Group

About a month or so ago I started a Happiness Project group ie. People sitting in my living room talking about Happiness with Activity 1 of Grechen Rubin’s start up manual…… and we are going to have Activity 2 soon so watch this space! I also started a Facebook group for the Happiness Soup project (which is affiliated to Grechen’s Happiness Project and her group/s on Facebook….. lots of threads to Happiness all over the world.

I want to keep things fairly informal – I don’t believe we should sit down and be all serious about the subject; but one thing I get out of talking and writing about Happiness stuff is how much people really love talking/debating/arguing/writing about it…. And there are no right or wrong answers…. It is fascinating and I just love hearing other people’s views on Happiness/Life etc.

The following link is to the Happiness Soup group on Facebook…. Sign up – I am hoping for some lively debate soon………

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=125411324792&ref=ts

And, this is a link to Grechen Rubin’s Happiness blog of 24th August……. If you don’t want to read all of it just scroll down till you see the Happiness Soup Tin…. Yeah!

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/
What Image Suggests Happiness to You?

Relationships

I haven’t been away. I’ve been having the time of my life being entertained by young nieces and nephews, in-laws and in-laws of in-laws who have been in SA from at least 3 corners of the earth to celebrate Grandmere’s 80th birthday. It has been great fun and when great uncle Pierre returns to France on Saturday night we will be back to normal, I think! And in between all this my PC contracted a massive virus, went to the repair shop, then back again and again, operating systems were uninstalled, re-installed, uninstalled and so on; I am hoping everything is now ok…. fingers crossed.

So with all the family stuff happening, seeing old faces and meeting new ones, renewing friendships, I thought this blog should be about relationships and how they affect our lives, how we age, our happiness, our friendships, our business lives……

Relationships

For 70 + years an incredible program designed to study mental and physical well being has been conducted by Harvard University. The study was designed to find out what made people happy and has examined a group of 268 Harvard students over their entire lives.

Professor George Vaillant has directed the study for the past 40 years and this is what he says about general well-being and aging well:

"That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people."

And

"It is social aptitude not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging."

Tom Peters has this to say about relationships:

Basics #1. "It's always 'the people.' " It may be glib, but in this instance I don't care. Network, keep your promises, behave decently. Your are as good as your relationships. Period. Short term. Long term. Good times. Tough times. This is the time (though all times are, in fact, the time) to "over" invest in relationship building and maintenance.

Monday Morning List

Gretchen Rubin’s blog this morning directs readers to a blog called 1000 Awesome Things – and yes, this guy really has listed and written about his 1000 awesome things. I only glanced at about 200 things and just about everything hit the spot. If you want to read the full thing then go to: http://1000awesomethings.com/the-top-1000/ .

These are a few things that made me smile or just say ahhhh.

#777 Reading the nutritional label and eating it anyway
#778 When someone unjams the photocopier for you
#774 Discovering those little tabs on the side of the aluminium foil box
#740 Drinking those little ice crystals floating in your freezing cold glass of Coke
#718 When you sneeze and a stranger says bless you..... and......
#753 When your sneeze stalls for a second and then comes booming out
#758 Celebrating your pet’s birthday even though they have no idea what’s going on
#936 Perfect parallel-parking on the first try
#990 Picking up a q and a u at the same time in Scrabble
#737 Catching somebody singing in their car and sharing a laugh with them

And the absolute best:

#710 When little babies let out adult-sized burps